Reports asylum seekers headed to Australia
A boat carrying 65 Sri Lankan asylum seekers has reportedly left India's southeast coast for Australia, sparking a crackdown on refugee camps around Pondicherry, camp sources and police reports say.
Sources said a steel-hulled boat secretly left the former French colonial settlement for Christmas Island last Friday in rough seas.
Since then police have rounded up suspects and have been tracking people smugglers, with a focus on refugees whose paperwork and registration papers are not in order.
A Coastal Security report from Pondicherry said there was "reliable intelligence" that there is a "possibility of illegal ferrying of 65 Sri Lankan Tamils from a French speaking area ... through fishing boats."
"It is presume that the area may be Pondicherry/Karaikal," it said.
As a result, it said fisherfolk of Pondicherry were to be scrutinised, railway and bus stations were to be closely watched "for the movement of Sri Lankan people", special attention paid to coastal areas "day and night" and all hotels were to be checked for unregistered guests.
"All the best officers of police stations having purview of coastal area may be sensitised on grass roots level intelligence," it said.
Camp sources were blunt in their assessment.
"A steel-hulled boat with 64 or 65 people left for Australia on Friday night, and now the police are searching everywhere for the smugglers and anyone else considering such a trip," a camp veteran told AAP.
The southeast coast of India is dotted with refugee camps filled with more than 100,000 Sri Lankan Tamils who fled a 26-year civil war.
However, repatriation efforts since the war ended more than 10 years ago have been stifled by allegations that Tamils are victimised upon return.
A lack of access to education and employment, and ongoing resentment over the bitter and failed struggle by the Liberation Tiger Tamils of Eelam to establish an independent homeland, are often cited as barriers by those who have returned. That continues to underpin the smuggling rackets.
Earlier this year the vessel Daya Mata set sail with 183 passengers, including women, children and infants, on board, with people smugglers charging each adult $US5,000 ($A7265) and $US1600 ($A2325) per child for a trip to New Zealand, but they were never heard from again.
Sources also said seas off the coast of Pondicherry have been extremely rough in recent days.
"Even fishermen are not venturing into the seas," one source in Chennai said.
